Jenson Button: “Obviously not the easiest start to the season…”

McLaren endured another difficult day in Jerez as the Jenson Button failed to complete a flying lap on his first outing in the MP4-30, but the former World Champion says he’s not concerned about the teething problems with the package.

The car spent most of the day in the garage after running five stop-start laps early in the day, before Jenson re-emerged for a single lap on a damp track at the end of the day.

“It’s nice to be a part of the new era of McLaren-Honda,” he said. “I think it has a very exciting future, but as we all know things take a little bit of time. I feel that the atmosphere in the team is very good, and I when I say team, I mean McLaren-Honda. I think that it’s key for everyone to remember that it’s not McLaren with an engine manufacturer, it is one team, with one goal. It’s a good atmosphere.

“Obviously not the easiest start to the season, but as we know it’s a very complicated power unit. We will get our heads around it, and in terms of the problems we had today we had our head around it and understand the issue, and that’s what the last run of the day was in the wet, to really understand it, and I think we do now, which is good. So we’re hoping for a much more productive day three and day four.”

Button cited Red Bull’s 2014 testing problems as an example of a team turning things around: “You look at where the Red Bull was at the first couple of tests, and even the last test in Bahrain – obviously they got the result taken away from them, but they finished second at the first Grand Prix. So a lot can happen.

“And we always knew the first test was going to be difficult, it always is, it’s not as straightforward as it used to be with sticking an engine in the car and trying to power round. It’s a very complex system, the power unit. We’ve had a few little niggling things that we’ve been able to solve now. As I said tomorrow we’ll see where we stand.”